Classroom behaviour and facework: balancing threats and enhancements

This paper discusses teachers’ utterances in relation to pupils’ social behaviour and examines this aspect of classroom discourse from the perspective of theories of face and politeness. It is suggested that the utterances teachers use in relation to pupils’ social behaviour are potentially different from those used when referring to pupils’ academic work, and this is investigated by exploring patterns in teachers’ utterances in terms of their potential to comprise either face‐threatening acts or the equivalent face enhancements. The data are taken from a study conducted in a UK secondary school, where the school has followed government guidance and is using a system of rewards and sanctions in relation to pupils’ social behaviour in the classroom. Speech data were collected through 12 hours of lesson observations, with the lessons being voice‐recorded and transcribed and then categorised in terms of whether utterances addressed classroom tasks or classroom behaviour. The findings show that face enhancements were used less frequently in behaviour‐oriented utterances than in task‐oriented utterances. I suggest that by focusing on facework in the classroom it is possible to introduce a fresh way of considering the way teachers speak to pupils about behaviour; in particular, I suggest that teachers might be unaware of the nature of their linguistic output as it emerges through whole‐school use of limit‐setting behaviour policies. In view of the inconsistent use of face threats and face enhancements the findings in this study are relevant to those people who have responsibility for behaviour policies in individual schools, as well as to providers of initial teacher training.